Document tracking in heterogeneous application environments

ABSTRACT

A method of naming documents according to a document naming convention (DNC) includes receiving, from any of a plurality of data processing applications (DPAs) within an enterprise, a request for a document name and generating a document name “infix” portion in compliance with the DNC for inclusion in the document name. The prefix may be descriptive of a characteristic of the document and the suffix may indicate a document type, a document format, or both. The infix may include a fixed portion and a modifiable portion. The fixed portion may include a datestamp and a document unification identifier. The infix may include a variable portion that can be modified by a DPA that creates a new or modified document, but the name of the modified document maintains the fixed portion of the original document.

BACKGROUND

1. Field of the Disclosure

The present disclosure relates to document management and, moreparticularly, to managing the naming of documents within an enterpriseemploying heterogeneous applications.

2. Description of the Related Art

Business documents in diverse vertical industries are typicallyprocessed by multiple applications that execute on different computingsystems and platforms in different virtual and geographic locations.These diverse systems and applications cooperate to achieve specificobjectives of the business. From the perspective of a business documentemployed within the enterprise, this cooperation may be characterized asa processing flow in which a document may pass through one or more ofthe diverse systems, possibly undergoing transformations in name,content, structure, formatting, and so forth.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of selected elements of an enterpriseimplementing a document naming convention;

FIG. 2 is a depiction of an exemplary implementation of a document name;

FIG. 3 depicts additional detail of selected aspects of an infix portionof the document name depicted in FIG. 2;

FIG. 4 depicts additional detail of selected aspects of a fixed portionof the document name infix depicted in FIG. 3;

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of selected elements of an embodiment of adocument naming and document management method;

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of selected elements of an embodiment of adocument naming and document management method;

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of selected elements of an embodiment of adocument naming and document management method; and

FIG. 8 is a block diagram depicting selected elements of an embodimentof a data processing system suitable for use in implementing thedocument naming convention in the enterprise of FIG. 1.

DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENT(S)

Traditionally, heterogeneous applications operating within an enterprisetypically lack an explicit mechanism for conveying a relationshipbetween a document created, modified, or otherwise processed by oneapplication based on an original document created by a differentapplication, possibly on a different system. Consequently, it isdifficult to track the ancestors and descendants, including how manychild documents were generated from an original document or how manyoriginal documents may have been aggregated into a particular document.

Within an enterprise, a database may exist to collect and organizedocument event records generated by the applications that the enterpriseemploys. Associations may be made through points of entry and exit,application interfaces, and document characteristics. These associationsmay be tied together through tabular link lists that evolve to a complexset of relationships correlating the document flow through theapplication cloud.

When, however, applications do not perform as expected or events do notget generated, the information that is critical to maintaining accuratedocument “visibility” is missing or discontinuous. The complexity of therelationships makes for a resource-intensive visibility system thattends to be fragile such that the loss of one event might result insubstantial loss of visibility.

Disclosed herein is a uniform document naming and identificationmechanism to support tracking a document within an enterprise, cloud, orcloud-like computing environment where multiple and differing(heterogeneous) applications may process a document. Disclosedmechanisms support visibility enabling users to determine the history ofany document, the number of descendant generations of a document, howmany child documents were generated by the original document, what, ifany, documents are aggregated to a particular document, and so forth.

In one aspect, a disclosed method of naming documents according to adocument naming convention (DNC) includes receiving, from any of aplurality of document processing applications (DPAs) within anenterprise, a request for a document name and generating, by a documentname generator (DNG), a document name “infix” portion in compliance withthe DNC. The infix portion is then included, along with a prefix and asuffix, in the document name. The document name is then sent to the DPAthat generated the request.

The prefix may be descriptive of a characteristic of the document, e.g.,“ORDER” for a document that represents a purchase order. The suffix mayindicate a document type, a document format, or both, e.g., “EDI,”“XML,” “IDOC,” etc. In some embodiments, generating the infix mayinclude generating a fixed portion and a modifiable portion. The fixedportion may include a datestamp indicative of a particular point in timesuch as, for example, the time when the fixed portion is generated orthe time when the document name request was generated, transmitted, orreceived. The fixed portion may also include a document unificationidentifier (DUID). In some embodiments, the DUID is an n-characteralphanumeric string where the number of characters is preferablysufficient to accommodate a large number of unique DUIDs, butsufficiently low to provide DUIDs that are relatively easy to recall andmanipulate. In some implementations, for example, the number ofcharacters in the DUIDs may be in the range of five to seven.

Generating the DUID may include accessing a pool of predetermined DUIDs.A DNC server may allocate the predetermined DUIDs among the DPAsperiodically or from time to time so that a pool of predetermined DUIDsis allocated to each of the DPAs. The allocating of DUIDs may includedetermining a number of predetermined DUIDs to allocate for each of theplurality of DPAs based on a number of requests expected during aspecified interval from each of the plurality of DPAs. The number ofpredetermined DUIDs allocated to each of the DPAs may be a factor of Mtimes the expected number of requests, where M is greater than one. Insome embodiments, for example, approximately two to four times thenumber of expected DUIDs are allocated to each DPA.

In another aspect, a disclosed data processing system includes aprocessor having access to executable instructions, stored in a computerreadable medium where the instructions include instructions to allocate,from time to time, availability for a pool of DUIDs among a plurality ofDPAs. Responsive to receiving a document name request from a DNG onbehalf of a DPA associated with the DNG, a DUID may be acquired from aplurality of available DNGs allocated to the DPA. The acquired DUID maythen be provided to the requesting DNG for use in naming a document. TheDUID pool may then be modified to indicate the acquired DUID as beingunavailable. The instructions may further include instructions togenerate a timestamp based on a time associated with the document namerequest and provide the timestamp to the DNG. The acquired DUID and thetimestamp may be included in an infix portion of a document name. Theinstructions may further include instructions to generate a uniqueserial identifier (USI) and provide the USI to the DNG. Allocation ofthe DUIDs among the DPAs may be based on numbers of requests associatedwith the DPAs expected based on historical data.

In yet another aspect, disclosed herein is a computer readable storagemedium containing embedded, processor-executable instructions forprocessing documents according to a document naming convention where theinstructions include instructions to send, in response to accessing anoriginating document not having a DNC-compliant document name, adocument name request to a DNG. In response to receiving at least aportion of a DNC-compliant document name from the DNG, the DNC-compliantname is sent to the originating requestor. The DNC-compliant nameincludes the received portion of the DNC-compliant document name.Responsive to a DPA modifying the originating document to create amodified document, a modified document name, modified in accordance withthe DNC, may be generated and the modified document name assigned to themodified document. The modified document name includes the portion ofthe DNC-compliant document name assigned to the originating document sothat the document chain is easily detected or verified from the documentnames while still permitting users and applications to modify prefix andsuffix names of documents to suit particular needs and preferences. Insome embodiments, the portion of the DNC-compliant name includes a fixedportion and a variable portion. The fixed portion may include ann-character DUID and a timestamp. Creating the modified document namemay include modifying the variable portion of the infix without alteringthe fixed portion.

In some implementations, a disclosed document naming system may includea DNC, an application, system, or other resource for generating uniqueidentifiers, and a document process convention for using the DNC amongstthe participating applications.

In embodiments, disclosed herein, a DNC may mandate a multiple portiondocument name including a prefix or left-most portion, one or more infixor middle portions, and a suffix or right-most portion. The prefix andsuffix may be used to convey conventional document name attributes. Theprefix, for example, may describe the function or some othercharacteristic of the document; e.g., order, acknowledgement, invoice,plan, schedule, etc. The suffix may describe a type of document, aformat of the document, or both, e.g., TXT, XML, HTML, IDOC, etc. Theinfix may include one or more unique identifier(s) created by the DNG.Depending upon the implementation, a “-” (dash) might separate theprefix and infix portions, a “.” (period) might separate the suffix fromthe infix. In the case of aggregation, a “ 0 ” (underscore) mightseparate source component from aggregate infix identifier.

The DNG may be configured to allocate a pool of DUIDs for use by eachapplication in some designated period (hour, day, week, month, etc.). Aparticipating application might request and receive some number ofidentifiers for use during the designated period. Typically the numberof DUIDs allocated to an application for a specific interval mightexceed, by a significant safety margin, e.g., 200% to 400%, the numberof (original) documents expected based on historical data.

The implementation might include a DNC server that maintains the DUIDallocations and a set of DNGs that might share knowledge of theallocations. A set of one or more DNGs might be implemented within anapplication or system domain of the enterprise. Applications or systemswithin the domain may query the domain's DNCs for a document number.These distributed generators may have knowledge of the DUIDs and uniqueidentifiers used by all of the other generators in the domain and anynew or restarted generator would first query the generator community forestablished allocations to ensure that any DUID or identifier issued isunique within the enterprise for the specified duration and to provideredundancy in the event of a generator failure.

The format of unique identifiers created by the distributed generatorsis an implementation detail, but might include an n-character upper casealphanumeric value (A-Z, 0-9) for the DUID or an n-digit number forother unique identifiers. For the case of a 6-character DUID, therewould billions of unique DUIDs, but the six character DUID is,nevertheless, relatively easy to remember and takes up little space in afile name. The format of a DUID could be extended to more or fewercharacters and mixed case to adjust the number of unique DUIDs accordingto the volume of document name requests.

The infix portion of a document name may contain one or more uniqueidentifiers including, as an example, the DUID provided by a generatorand a timestamp. For example, the name for a purchase order representedby an XML document might be:

order-YYMMDDhhmmss-001AK3.xml

where “order” is the prefix, “xml” is the suffix, and the infix includesa timestamp (YYMMDDhhmmss) and a DUID (001AK3). In some embodiments, theinfix includes a fixed portion intended to remain with the document andall of the document's descendants and a variable portion that may bemodified by an application, for example, when a document is split intomultiple documents, converted to another type of document, or aggregatedwith other documents. In some embodiments, the variable portion of theinfix may include a serial number generated by one of the generators. Inthis case, the document discussed above may have a document name of theform

order-YYMMDDhhmmss-001AK3-000001.xml

where the variable portion of the infix is a 6-digit serial number(000001), referred to herein as a USI. In some embodiments, a DPA mightrequest one or more USIs from its generator and begin each periodstarting at zero and then count up, restarting at zero at each new clockperiod. The application may periodically check in with the generator toupdate USI requirements (every x periods for example).

Generally, under a DNC disclosed herein, a document might be named orrenamed according to the DNC when the document is first accessed orgenerated by a DPA that adheres to the DNC. The fixed portion of theinfix would be maintained by all subsequent DPAs that access or modifythe document. If a DPA splits a document into multiple child documentsthe variable portion of the infix, preceding the suffix, might bealtered for uniqueness.

In some embodiments, an aggregation of multiple original documents wouldnecessitate the renaming (e.g., for archive purposes) of the originaldocuments to indicate the infix portion of the aggregated document. Forexample: if an aggregated document was named:

order-091218-000124-000010.xml

and the document was generated from two source documents:

order-091217-004567-008556.xml and

order-091216-012981-009967.xml

the source documents might be renamed, after aggregation, as:

order-091217-004567-008556 091218-000124-000010.xml and

order-091216-012981-009967 091218-000124-000010.xml.

In some embodiments, the prefix and suffix are freely changeable toanything useful for the processing and naming of the document, providedthe infix portion remains constant within the unique document content.

The disclosed DNC and system for implementing the DNC is relativelylightweight and easily understood by users. The names submitted to adatabase for tracking don't need to appear in any order to be correlated(by infix). For example if a document went through four applications andthe prefix and suffix was changed in the middle two and the middle twofailed to report into the visibility data base there would be still thefirst (origin) entry and the fourth (final destination) entry with thesame infix showing where it started and where it ended. In someembodiments, the naming convention may be a switch-selectable optionpermitting and recommending, but not requiring compliance.

The DNG may be implemented as stand-alone or embedded programs taskedwith DUID and USI creation. DNGs may share access to and knowledge ofthe DUID allocations and USI values so there is no overlap. DNGs mayrestart the USI count based on some period (e.g., daily). The number ofDNGs is not constrained so that there is no bottleneck. DUIDs generatorscan be widely distributed in a clustered or cloud environment. Locallyresident generators can share active DUID assignments for redundancy incluster operations. USIs may be created and tracked by DUID in generatorcache for the period and shared to the clustered generators.

Under the described DNC, the failure of a single generator or thefailure of an intervening system failing to report document visibilityinformation is not catastrophic. Assuming all DPAs adhere to the DNC,there is sufficient uniformity in the infix to identify the source orsources of a document and any descendants of the document. Moreover, asmuch or as little historical detail can be collected in the processchain to fit the visibility requirements of an organization.

Additional facilities can be developed off the disclosed DNC to supportservice level agreements (SLAs). Given the reception of the document atpoint of origin and an architectural understanding of end point ofprocessing, a timer (SLA) can be set at the destination end pointwaiting for the reception document with the same corresponding infix.The prefix and suffix and content format could have changed in theintervening applications, but the infix remains the same and therebyprovides a receipt notice.

In the following description, details are set forth by way of example tofacilitate discussion of the disclosed subject matter. It should beapparent to a person of ordinary skill in the field, however, that thedisclosed embodiments are exemplary and not exhaustive of all possibleembodiments. Throughout this disclosure, a hyphenated form of areference numeral refers to a specific instance of an element and theun-hyphenated form of the reference numeral refers to the elementgenerically or collectively. Thus, for example, widget 12-1 refers to aninstance of a widget class, which may be referred to collectively aswidgets 12 and any one of which may be referred to generically as awidget 12.

Referring now to FIG. 1, a block diagram illustrates selected elementsof an embodiment of an enterprise 100 employing disclosed DNCtechniques. In the depicted embodiment, enterprise 100 includes aplurality of DPAs 102-1 through 102-4. DPAs 102 represent any of variousapplications including, as examples, enterprise resource planningapplications, database applications, integration applications, and thelike. DPAs 102 may be heterogeneous applications that operate ondifferent platforms and may generate or operate on different types ofdocuments including, as examples, extensible markup language (XML)documents, electronic data interface (EDI) documents, text (TXT)documents, intermediate documents (IDOCs), and so forth. (IDOC is aservice access point (SAP) format for transferring data for a businesstransaction.) A purchase order document, for example, may be accessedand processed by the DPAs 102 of enterprise 100 and the DPAs 102 maycreate modified forms of the document, split the document into multipledocuments, aggregate a set of documents, and so forth.

In the embodiment depicted in FIG. 1, the DPAs 102 of enterprise 100 aredepicted in communication with a set of one or more distributed documentnumbering generators referred to herein as DNGs 104. As shown in FIG. 1,an enterprise 100 may include more than one DNG 104 and any given DNG104 may be coupled to one or more DPAs 102. For example, as depicted inFIG. 1, DPA 102-1 and DPA 102-2 may exist within a common domain that isserviced by DNG 104-1 while DPA 102-3 and DPA 102-4 may reside on adifferent domain serviced by DNG 104-2. Although this example describeseach DNG 104 as being associated with the DPAs 102 of a particulardomain, the association between DPAs 102 and DNGs 104 is not so limitedand DNGs 104 may be associated with DPAs 102 in substantially anydesirable configuration.

FIG. 1 further depicts a DNC Server 110 configured with a documentnumbering application 112 and a database structure identified as DUIDPool 120 coupled to DNC Server 110. Document number application 112 mayrepresent or encompass a set of instructions, executable by DNC server110 and stored in a computer readable medium that is accessible to DNCServer 110.

In the depicted embodiment, DNC Server 110 may provide a centralizedfacility for the maintenance and allocation of DUIDs for use by thedistributed DNGs 104. It should be noted that any of the elementsdepicted in FIG. 1 may be implemented as or within a data processingsystem or apparatus that includes one or more processors having accessto a computer memory or some other form of a computer readable medium.Thus, as suggested by its name, DNC Server 110 may be implemented as aserver system, while DPAs 102 and DNGs 104 may each be implementedwithin distinct data processing systems. Alternatively, any two or moreof the elements depicted in FIG. 1 may be integrated within a singlephysical system.

In addition, FIG. 1 encompasses configurations in which the geographicdistances separating the DPAs 102 may be small or large. In someembodiments, it may be preferable to provide DNGs 104 that are local tothe DPAs 102 they support for performance and reliability reasons, butthis is not an absolute requirement. Similarly, FIG. 1 encompasses anysuitable form of network and networking connections among the variouselements depicted.

In some embodiments, enterprise 100 implements a DNC that is illustratedin FIGS. 2, 3, and 4, which represent various aspects of a document nameaccording to one implementation of the DNC implemented within enterprise100. FIG. 2 depicts a document name 200 as including a prefix portion202 (also referred to herein simply as prefix 202), an infix portion 204(infix 204), and suffix portion 206 (suffix 206). Prefix 202 may be useror machine alterable to suit the needs of a DPA or user. Prefix 202 may,for example, describe a characteristic, function, or other aspect of thecorresponding document. For example, the prefix 202 of a purchase orderdocument may include or consist of the word “order” whereas an invoicedocument may include or consist of the word “invoice.”

The suffix 206 of document name 200 may represent or indicate the “type”or format of a document where “type” is intended to mean a document typefrom the perspective of a DPA. So, for example, the document types thatmay be employed within a large enterprise 100 may include, for example,an EDI type, an XML type, an IDOC type and so forth. In theseembodiments, the suffix 206 may serve a traditional function ofindicating which DPAs 102 can operate on the document.

The infix 204 of document name 200 is or may be entirely a construct ofthe DNC employed by the enterprise and implemented by DNC Server 110 andDNGs 104. Referring to FIG. 3 and FIG. 4, the depicted implementation ofinfix 204 includes a fixed portion 302 and a variable portion 304. Fixedportion 302 may represent a document name portion that is not altered bythe DNC as the name is applied to documents generated or modified byDPAs 102. Alternatively, variable portion 304 of infix 204 may representa portion of the document intended to be modifiable by applications toprevent redundant use of document names and to differentiate amongdocuments derived from a common origin. FIG. 4 depicts the fixed portion302 of infix 204 according to a DNC implementation described herein. Inthe depicted implementation,

In accordance with various embodiments, the methods described herein maybe implemented as one or more software programs running on one or morecomputer processors, which may be located on one or more geographicallydispersed physical systems. Dedicated hardware implementationsincluding, but not limited to, application specific integrated circuits,programmable logic arrays and other hardware devices can likewise beconstructed to implement the methods described herein. Furthermore,alternative software implementations including, but not limited to,distributed processing or component/object distributed processing,parallel processing, or virtual machine processing can also beconstructed to implement the methods described herein.

Turning now to FIG. 5, selected elements of an embodiment of a documentnaming method 500 are depicted. Method 500 represents functionality thatmay be implemented within a DNG 104, DNC Server 110, or distributedacross both. In the depicted embodiment, method 500 includes receiving(block 502), from any of a plurality of DPAs within an enterprise, arequest for a document name. The depicted embodiment of method 500further includes generating (block 510), by a DNG, a document name infixportion in compliance with the DNC and including (block 512) the infixportion, a prefix, and a suffix in the document name. The document nameis then sent (block 520) to a requesting DPA.

Referring now to FIG. 6, selected elements of an aspect of a documentnaming convention method 600 are shown. The functionality represented bymethod 600 may implemented within document numbering application 112 ofDNC Server 110, which may be the centralized allocator of DUIDs andother portions of a DNC. In the depicted embodiment method 600 includesinstructions to allocate (block 602), from time to time, availabilityfor a pool of DUIDs among a plurality of DPAs. Responsive to receiving adocument name request from a DNG requesting a document name on behalf ofa DPA associated with the DNG, method 600 as shown includes instructionsto acquire (block 610) a DUID from a plurality of available DNGsallocated to the DPA. As depicted in FIG. 6, the acquired DUID is thenprovided (block 612) to the requesting DNG for use in naming a documentand the DUID pool is modified (block 620) to indicate the acquired DUIDas being unavailable.

Referring now to FIG. 7, selected elements of an embodiment of adocument naming convention method 700 are shown. The functionalityrepresented in FIG. 7 may be implemented in a system that executes oneor more DPAs 102, either as an aspect of a DPA itself or as an addedfeature. In the embodiment depicted in FIG. 7, method 700 includessending (block 702), responsive to accessing an originating document nothaving a DNC-compliant document name, a document name request to a DNG.In response to receiving at least a portion of a DNC-compliant documentname from the DNG, method 700 as depicted in FIG. 7 further includesassigning (block 710) the DNC-compliant name to the originatingdocument, wherein the DNC-compliant name includes the received portionof the DNC-compliant document name. When a DPA modifies an originatingdocument to create a modified document, method 700 includes creating(block 712) a modified document name in accordance with the DNC andassigning (block 720) the modified document name to the modifieddocument, wherein the modified document name includes the portion of theDNC-compliant document name assigned to the originating document.

Referring now to FIG. 8, selected elements of a data processing system800 suitable for implementing executing the document namingfunctionality described herein are illustrated. In some embodiments, forexample, the functionality represented by DNC Server 110, DNG 104, orDPA 102 as shown in FIG. 1 may be implemented on a general purposecomputer such as the data processing system 800 depicted in FIG. 1. Itshould be appreciated, however, that a single system implementation isjust one alternative and, in other implementations, the functionalityrepresented by DNC Server 110 may be implemented in multiple serversystems.

As depicted in FIG. 8, data processing system 800 includes a generalpurpose processor 802 connected via a bus 804 to a system memory 810. Anetwork adapter or network interface card (NIC) 820 and a persistentmass storage device (830) are also shown as being connected to bus 804.Persistent storage 830 may be implemented with a conventional magneticdisk drive. Alternatively, mass storage may be provided to system 800via networked storage including, as examples, a storage area network(SAN) or network attached storage (NAS). System 800 may further includeinput devices (not depicted) including keyboards, a mouse, and so forthas well as output devices (not depicted) including a display terminaland one or more printers. Moreover, although system 800 in FIG. 8 may beimplemented with a single machine or computer, other embodiments mayemploy a cluster or group of individual, but interconnected systemsincluding server cluster implementations in which multiple individualprocessing boards are installed in a single chassis.

To the maximum extent allowed by law, the scope of the presentdisclosure is to be determined by the broadest permissibleinterpretation of the following claims and their equivalents, and shallnot be restricted or limited to the specific embodiments described inthe foregoing detailed description.

1. A method of naming documents according to a document namingconvention (DNC), comprising: receiving, from any of a plurality ofdocument processing applications (DPAs) within an enterprise, a requestfor a document name; generating, by a document name generator, adocument name infix portion in compliance with the DNC; including theinfix portion, a prefix, and a suffix in the document name; and sendingthe document name to a requesting DPA.
 2. The method of claim 1, whereinthe prefix is descriptive of a characteristic of the document.
 3. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the suffix indicates at least one of: adocument type and a document format.
 4. The method of claim 1, whereingenerating the infix includes generating a fixed portion and amodifiable portion.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein generating thefixed portion includes generating a datestamp indicative of the timewhen the fixed portion is generated.
 6. The method of claim 4, whereinthe generating fixed portion includes generating a document unificationidentifier (DUID).
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the DUID is anN-digit alphanumeric string and wherein N is 5, 6 or
 8. 8. The method ofclaim 6, wherein generating the DUID comprises accessing a pool ofpredetermined DUIDs allocated for the requesting DPA.
 9. The method ofclaim 8, further comprising allocating respective pools of predeterminedDUIDs for each of the plurality of DPAs.
 10. The method of claim 9,wherein said allocating comprises determining a number of predeterminedDUIDs to allocate for each of the plurality of DPAs based on a number ofrequests expected during a specified interval from each of the pluralityof DPAs.
 11. The method of claim 10, wherein said determining the numberof predetermined DUIDs to allocate comprises allocating a factor of Mtimes the expected number of requests, where M is in the range ofapproximately 2 to approximately
 4. 12. A data processing systemincluding a processor having access to executable instructions, storedin a computer readable medium, the instructions including instructionsto: allocate, from time to time, availability for a pool of documentunification identifiers (DUIDs) among a plurality of document processingapplications (DPAs); responsive to receiving a document name requestfrom a document name generator (DNG) requesting a document name onbehalf of a DPA associated with the DNG, acquire a DUID from a pluralityof available DNGs allocated to the DPA; provide the acquired DUID to therequesting DNG for use in naming a document; and modify the DUID pool toindicate the acquired DUID as being unavailable.
 13. The system of claim12, said instructions further comprising instructions to: generate atimestamp based on a time associated with the document name request; andprovide the timestamp to the DNG generator.
 14. The system of claim 13,wherein said instructions to provide the timestamp and the acquired DUIDcomprise instructions to include the acquired DUID and the timestamp inan infix portion of a document name.
 15. The system of claim 14, saidinstructions further comprising instructions to: generate a uniqueserial identifier (USI); and provide the USI to the DNG generator. 16.The system of claim 12, wherein said instructions to allocate compriseinstructions to allocate said availability based on expected numbers ofrequests associated with the DPAs.
 17. A nontransitory computer readablemedium containing embedded instructions, executable by a processor, forprocessing documents according to a document naming convention (DNC),said instructions comprising instructions to: send, responsive toaccessing an originating document not having a DNC-compliant document,name a document name request to a document name generator (DNG); assign,responsive to receiving at least a portion of a DNC-compliant documentname from the DNG, the DNC-compliant name to the originating document,wherein the DNC-compliant name includes the received portion of theDNC-compliant document name; and create, responsive to modifying theoriginating document to create a modified document, a modified documentname in accordance with the DNC and assign the modified document name tothe modified document, wherein the modified document name includes theportion of the DNC-compliant document name assigned to the originatingdocument.
 18. The computer readable medium of claim 17, wherein saidportion of the DNC-compliant name includes an n-character alphanumericdocument unification identifier.
 19. The computer readable medium ofclaim 18, wherein said portion of the DNC-compliant name furtherincludes a timestamp.
 20. The computer readable medium of claim 18,wherein said portion of the DNC-compliant name includes a fixed portionand a variable portion and wherein said instructions to create themodified document name include instructions to modify the variableportion.